This is an anonymized version of a survey done by Happy and Effective. The data in the graphs has all been randomized, and likely doesn’t match any of the text. Specific content like comments and quotes have also been removed (anything that couldn’t be anonymized well).
What is going well at COMPANY, and what could be going better? We conducted interviews and a survey to find out.
What COMPANY is Doing Well
We should celebrate these! These are the strengths of COMPANY.
- High engagement overall; people are generally happy with COMPANY.
- High trust in COMPANY leadership.
- Strong belief that work at COMPANY is impactful
These are covered in more depth in the Celebrations section.
What COMPANY Should Focus On
These areas could use some work. These are covered in more depth in the Improvement Themes and Recommendations sections. COMPANY should focus on improving these areas:
- Structure and Clarity improvements for all teams.
- Inclusion of diverse perspectives; helping people feel like they belong.
- Culture of Feedback, both giving and receiving.
- Support for people who feel less supported.
Considerations While Reading This Report
- We’re using several perspectives to get a fuller picture:
- Context From Interviews. Some concepts didn’t emerge from the survey data itself, but did come up in interviews.
- Overall Score, e.g. “an average of 4.1”.
- Distribution, like when a question had a number of people on the lower end of the scale (e.g. Strongly Disagree).
- Segmentation, e.g. when different segments (like Main Role) had significantly different responses.
- Sampling Bias
- Our response rate wasn’t as high as we were aiming for. If we had more responses that represent all of COMPANY, it’s likely that we would have lower (more negative) numbers on many of these measures.
- Reality is likely less positive. Happier employees are more likely to fill out surveys like this.
- People who work fewer hours for COMPANY are likely under-represented here.
- Baseline. This survey data is a snapshot of today, and doesn’t show trends. This survey sets baseline measurements that we can use to track changes to these metrics over time.
Survey Responses 👥
Our response rate of 40% (12 of 30) is below our target response rate of 70% (21 of 30). For surveys like this one, 70% is generally considered to be large enough to significantly reduce sampling bias (such as less-happy employees not completing the survey).
- Designer
- Engineer
- Product Manager
- <6 months
- 6-12 months
- 1-3 years
- 3+ years
Under-represented
We determined who is more or less under-represented by asking for a Likert response (1-7) to the statement “I identify as someone who is under-represented in tech”
We used the data twe ways: the 1-7 scale itself, and as two bins. The scale helped us see how the values correlated to other things. The bins helped us keep responses more anonymized when showing question answers.
We split the two bins this way:
- People with a score of 1-4 were marked as “Not under-represented”
- People with a score of 5-7 were marked as “Under-represented”
All Survey Questions ❓
This survey had ~23 content questions, each using a Likert scale of 1 - 7 (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree). There are three question groups covered below:
- 5 Engagement Questions
- 5 Effectiveness Questions
- 13 COMPANY Questions
The visuals here show the mean response for each question. Generally, below 5 is “bad”, 5-6 is “just okay” and 6+ is “good”. We’ll explore these in more depth in the Celebrations section, Imprevement Themes section and Recommendations section.
Engagement Questions
These are general engagement questions Happy and Effective asks of every company. Questions like these are pretty common/standard for employee surveys, and map roughly to happiness and retention.
The five questions we used were taken from CultureAmp’s employee survey questions.
Some comments pointed out that some of these questions as written don’t exactly apply to people who work part-time for COMPANY. (We’ll revise these on the next survey, thank you!)
I would recommend COMPANY as a great place to work
I rarely think about looking for a job at another company
I am proud to work for COMPANY
COMPANY motivates me to go beyond what I would in a similar role elsewhere
I see myself still working at COMPANY in two years’ time
Effectiveness Questions
These five questions are based on Google’s “The five keys to a successful Google team” (from Project Aristotle) which have been found to correlate strongly with team effectiveness. If you aren’t familiar with these, you might be interested in the NYTimes article about Project Aristotle).
These questions have also been used beyond Google, like in the Accelarate State of DevOps Reports (check these out if you haven’t!). This list has a lot in common with other frameworks, including the “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”.
Happy and Effective asks these questions of every team, as a baseline for the most common issues.
For COMPANY, “Impact” has the highest score and “Structure and Clarity” has the lowest score.
Personal Meaning: I am working on things at COMPANY that are personally important to me
Impact: I fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing at COMPANY matters
Psychological Safety: On my main project team, I can safely take risks without feeling defensive, insecure or embarrassed
Dependability: On my main project team, I can count on my teammates to do high quality work on time
Structure and Clarity: On my main project team, I have clarity around the team’s goals, roles, and execution plans
Tailored Questions for COMPANY
Questions in this section were tailored for COMPANY, based on things that came up during interviews with COMPANY team members. Many of these map roughly to the engagement and effectiveness questions from above, but these are a lot more targeted to the situation COMPANY is in today.
This section is sorted from highest to lowest score (mean).
I regularly give and receive feedback from leadership
I understand the high-level goals of COMPANY, and how my work supports those
I understand the goals of my project, and how my work supports those
I feel very supported, both personally and professionally
I trust that COMPANY executive leadership is doing what is best — for COMPANY, COMPANY team members, and our clients
I have great work/life balance at COMPANY
I feel like I am on track with my professional/career goals
On my main project team, it is clear who is responsible for what things
I regularly give and receive feedback from my peers
I understand what is expected of me as an employee
My main project team’s processes are clear and serve us well
My identity does not play a factor in how others perceive my ideas
Celebrations 🎉
These are the top strengths of COMPANY, the questions with the highest average scores:
- “I am happy with COMPANY”
- “Impact - I fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing at COMPANY matters”
- “I trust that COMPANY executive leadership is doing what is best — for COMPANY, COMPANY team members, and our clients”
- “I would recommend COMPANY as a great place to work”
- “I feel very supported, both personally and professionally”
Impact - I fundamentally believe that the work we’re doing at COMPANY matters
I trust that COMPANY executive leadership is doing what is best — for COMPANY, COMPANY team members, and our clients
I would recommend COMPANY as a great place to work
Of the five standard Engagement questions, this one tends to have responses on the higher end of the range (80-90% on the “agree” side). That’s great!
I feel very supported, both personally and professionally
This question was very high among many of the people who filled out this survey (great!), but you’ll also notice there was some “disagree” answers as well. We’ll cover this question more in the Improvement Themes section.
Improvement Themes 📈
These improvement themes emerged from the survey:
- Structure and Clarity improvements for all teams.
- Inclusion of diverse perspectives; helping people feel like they belong.
- Culture of Feedback, both giving and receiving.
- Support for people who feel less supported.
Structure & Clarity
Commentary on this section, anecdotes from survey responses and interviews.
Here are some metrics that we should target to improve here over the next quarter:
Structure and Clarity: On my main project team, I have clarity around the team’s goals, roles, and execution plans
My main project team’s processes are clear and serve us well
Inclusion
Commentary on this section, anecdotes from survey responses and interviews.
Here are some of the ways this came out in the interviews and survey:
- One aspect
- Another Aspect
- A third aspect
We have work to do to build this trust. We can do better at including people in these processes, and diversifying the leadership at COMPANY.
I’m so glad COMPANY is investing in working on these issues; there is work to be done. More in the Recommendations section.
As for the data we do have from the survey – we did get a good distribution of people who identify as under-represented and not under-represented.
My identity does not play a factor in how others perceive my ideas
Culture of Feedback
Commentary from survey and interviews:
Here are some metrics that we should target to improve here over the next quarter:
I regularly give and receive feedback from my peers
I regularly give and receive feedback from leadership
Career Goals
These questions didn’t show up in the top 5 by mean, but it’s still concerning how many low scores this one got, and how much it varies by segment.
Here are the breakdowns by segment. These are the metrics we can use to track this for the next quarter, too:
I feel like I am on track with my professional/career goals
This question correlated with both “Main Role”.
Engineers feel the most on-track with their goals on average, while Product Managers feel the least on-track with their goals on average.
Other Notable Trends 🤔
Questions with any “Strongly Disagree” responses
These questions had at least one “Strongly Disagree” response.
Recommendations 💡
These recommendations could be implemented by Casey Watts, or by someone else working for COMPANY, or by other external groups providing support.
The Proposed Plan section has a more concrete plan to cover these, with events on a timeline.
Principles
To ensure the actions taken in response to this survey are effective, here are some principles to keep in mind:
- Actions, not just words. COMPANY must take actions to prove commitment to change and improvement. Invest in team members and company culture. Many companies fall into the pattern of doing a survey like this and nothing comes from it – people definitely take notice of what does or doesn’t come from these.
- Include the people affected. Invite team members to participate in discussions and decision making. Leadership needs input from COMPANY team members to be effective, and the changes also work better when team members feel shared ownership.
- Listen to what isn’t being said. COMPANY leadership should acknowledge and respond to even “silent” signals, like the low response rate.
Focus Areas
Structure and Clarity
The most consistent and strongest signal from the surveys and interviews is that “Structure and Clarity” need to be improved.
Each team has different needs. These topics would have to be worked on on a per-team basis. If one team does work around clarifying responsibilities, other teams can (and should!) take that inspiration – but we will still have to do work to apply it to the other team’s context.
For the question “My main project team’s processes are clear and serve us well.” we may decide to do some of these:
- Taking Stock. Taking stock of the current situation: What are the current processes? Which ones work well for us? Which ones could be better?
- Regular Reflections. Many teams do a weekly or bi-weekly “retrospective” where these questions are discussed. (If teams do these already, great!)
- Improving Communication. Work on the other areas (Inclusion, Culture of Feedback) will help these processes improve over time as well, improving communication.
- Making Space. Do teams have enough time to work on clarifying these processes?
- Clarifying Responsibilities. Who on the team is able to make these processes clearer? Who has the responsibility, skill, and context to lead this effort?
The question “who is responsible for what?” came up in several of the interviews. To work on making that clearer, we may decide to do some of these:
- Making Responsibilities Explicit Taking stock of the current situation: What responsibilities need to be filled for teams to be successful? Who has which responsibilities today (explicitly or implicitly)? Who has the skills and interest in which skills? What skills/interest are missing from the team that we should hire for?
- Not Overloading Individuals. When individuals are overloaded with too much responsibility, we may decide to do things like: sharing the load with other team members, hiring, or prioritizing so the load is decreased.
- Skill Development. Addressing skill gaps through training or hiring
- Process Resiliency. Developing a process where managers (or someone!) takes stock of these situations regularly, so we can plan these things proactively instead of reactively.
Inclusion
- DEI Committee.
- Hopefully COMPANY has enough people on staff interested in this to form a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)working group.
- This group could discuss how to make COMPANY diverse (such as the hiring pipeline) equitable (such as pay fairness) and inclusive (such as influencing the culture and requesting training).
- Both W-2 employees and contractors should be invited to participate in these.
- Affinity Groups.
- COMPANY leadership should support the formation of Affinity Groups (also known as Employee Resource Groups / ERGs) for interested groups.
- Some common identity-based affinity groups include: women, Queer, Black, Latin, Asian, US veterans, neurodiversity, age (generational). At many companies, the first identity-based affinity group is a women’s group.
- Encouragement can happen in many places: in 1:1s, in informal conversations, in announcement email/messages, and at All Hands meetings.
- Members of a group should be encouraged to make their own spaces.
- Both W-2 employees and contractors should be invited to participate in these.
- Team members must be able to and encouraged to spend company time on these (paid).
- Informal Groups
- COMPANY leadership should also encourage the creation of spaces where people in these groups can talk to each other, such as Slack channels.
- Ideally these groups should be discoverable enough for new people to be able to join (but these do not need to be public or freely joinable by people who don’t self-identify as members of the group)
- Executive Sponsorship and Formal Groups
- COMPANY leadership should offer to sponsor groups, proactively offering support.
- Formal Affinity Groups can have influence over company policy like hiring practices.
- Formal Affinity Groups often also have a budget and can request training for team members.
- Public vs Private Groups
- Closed/private: Some spaces could be for only people who self-identify as a member of a group. This makes a safer space to communicate about potentially sensitive issues (such as seeking support for work situations).
- Open/public: Other spaces can be made to include allies. These channels are valuable to get allies actively engaged in supporting their teammates, asking questions and learning. Members of the affinity group should NOT be expected to participate in these to educate others (although many may choose to!).
- Training.
- Both leadership and team members should participate in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training/workshops.
- These should not be “HR-mandated powerpoint slides” instead, these should be actual discussions with coworkers about potentially uncomfortable topics, facilitated by someone experienced in facilitating these.
- Training will help people become aware of the issues other people face, care more about them, and work together much more effectively. People are their happiest and most effective when they feel like they belong. It takes deliberate work to cultivate an environment where everybody feels like they belong.
- Coaching.
- Coaching for interested individuals (leadership or team members). This can include: support processing challenging experiences, developing communication skills, and becoming more proactive at being inclusive (instead of just reactive or passive).
Culture of Feedback
- Modeling Behavior.
- Leadership should make it a point to give and receive feedback effectively, modeling the behavior we want to see in the organization.
- Skills Training.
- Both leadership and team members should learn and practice skills like: giving and receiving feedback effectively, navigating defensiveness, and building rapport through effective one-on-ones, cultivating cultural change, and developing trust.
- Coaching.
- Coaching for interested individuals (leadership or team members) on developing these and other skills further.
Support
Many people at COMPANY do not feel very supported. It’s so important that these people get this support. (Conversely, many people do feel very supported and that’s great!)
Activities
- Everyone Deserves Support. Everyone at COMPANY should have someone they meet with regularly who supports them personally and professionally. This support role could be someone’s manager, or someone else in the company, or someone external (like a coach).
- No Gaps. Leadership should try and determine if anyone has “fallen through” and doesn’t have this sort of support. For example, leaders are less likely to get support “the further up the chain” they go.
- Accessible Support. This support should be available when needed. If the supporter doesn’t have enough time to be available, that is not accessible. Another aspect here is voice vs text. Some people really appreciate text chat availability on Slack, and other people more appreciate being available for a call.
- Compatible Support. Each team member needs support that works for them. Sometimes there is a mismatch between two people who don’t quite align (and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with either person!). Another factor is the person’s background (like an engineer supporting a designer may not be a good match). People should be encouraged to change who they get support from when there’s a mismatch.
- Not Forced. It’s possible some people will want to opt out of getting professional support through COMPANY, and that’s okay. We shouldn’t force this support on anyone who isn’t interested.
- Reduce Barriers. We should make support easy to get. We can lower the barriers: support is accessible, available support is compatible and relevant, there is enough time to get support.
Proposed Plan
COMPANY team members would do these activities:
- Team Focus
- Focusing on each team to develop clarity around responsibilities and processes, focusing on how to make this self-sustaining. A team could make great progress in 2h/wk over 4 weeks (8 sessions). With this pattern, we could do 3 teams over 3 months.
- Training
- Bi-weekly 60-minute training for leaders over 3 months (leadership and communication skills, DEI topics)
- Bi-weekly 60-minute training for team members over 3 months (leadership and communication skills, DEI topics)
- Coaching
- Weekly 60-minute coaching for the executives over 3 months.
- Weekly 60-minute coaching for interested team members over 3 months.
- ERG
- Interested team members start one bi-weekly 60-minute employee resource group meeting.
Content
The content in each session will be based on the needs of the group/individual at the time. The topics will likely come from themes covered above and also ideas in the Happy and Effective Workshops page.
Example Schedule
Example schedule for someone who opts into everything:
- Week 1: 1h coaching session; 1h training
- Week 2: 1h coaching session; 1h ERG
- Week 3: 1h coaching session; 1h training
- Week 4: 1h coaching session; 1h ERG
- Week 5: 2h team focus; 1h coaching session; 1h training
- Week 6: 2h team focus; 1h coaching session; 1h ERG
- Week 7: 2h team focus; 1h coaching session; 1h training
- Week 8: 2h team focus; 1h coaching session; 1h ERG
- Week 9: 1h coaching session; 1h training
- Week 10: 1h coaching session; 1h ERG
- Week 11: 1h coaching session; 1h training
- Week 12: 1h coaching session; 1h ERG
- Week 13: Follow-up survey, comparing to benchmarks; setting new goals
Next Steps ➡️
Discussions
- Each team should take some time to discuss the results and think of ways to improve things – both on the team, and for COMPANY more widely. Everyone affects the culture here (even if leaders do have more influence than others).
- The executive team should discuss this report with each other, and decide how to best address this feedback.
Decisions
- The leadership team should decide what priorities to address, make a commitment to working on them, and take actions towards improving them like the ones recommended.
Survey Feedback
- If you have more feedback to share about the survey or report please feel free to reach out to Casey or one of the executives.
- Have ideas for the next survey, or want to be involved in the next one? Great! Reach out to Casey or one of the executives.
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